Students compare textbook prices simply because education is extremely expensive. Most students graduate with a large debt on their backs. College students, save for the lucky ones, often find themselves scrimping and saving for even the tiniest bit of extra money. Some of them choose to rent books, but there are a number of courses that simply require the effort of textbook price comparison because they need to keep those books on hand for future reference.
The simple explanation is that the economy is bad. While televisions around the country are blaring that the economy is better, the fact is down in the trenches jobs are still difficult to find. New companies still have trouble getting off the ground. People still have trouble spending and unlike a number of other industries, textbooks can’t just make themselves cheaper in the hopes of appealing to a wider audience. Without getting too much into it, if students compare textbook prices over the years the bad economy has just made it more difficult on both ends.
Textbooks have gotten more expensive because of both textbook rental services and the fact that less people are buying and less people are buying because the books have gotten more expensive and they might just not have the money for it. It’s a strange, cyclical situation and anyone who takes the effort to compare textbook prices will see it.
Even without the bad economy textbooks can easily cost hundreds of dollars. Textbooks represent a ton of knowledge. Some extremely specialized books such as those for highly technical courses such as architecture or the higher sciences such as advanced physics are more than paper with words – these are books full of information gleaned over many years, over many hours of toil and research. The price of the textbook represents all the effort that came into making sure that the information contained within is accurate and can help educate the next generation.
The act of textbook price comparison is fairly simple, as is it relatively easy to find a textbook price comparison search engine online. It makes it easy to compare textbook prices among stores around the country and for some engines around the world.
Those who want to compare textbook prices without the use of a search engine can do so by following the basics. They can travel from store to store, canvassing prices to find something that is vaguely within their price range. Those who compare textbook prices and find that there is nothing in their price range can elect to purchase used textbooks. While these opportunities may be few and far in between, these resellers will almost certainly sell these textbooks at a greatly reduced price, which is a boon to college students with limited budgets who don’t want to illegally photocopy the books.